On Monday, August 4, 2003, at 06:08 PM, Markus Enzenberger wrote:
The organizers of the Gifu Challenge have announced that they will use a new server-based protocol named SBCP instead of the Modem Protocol in future tournaments. A description of the protocol can be found here: http://igo.bz/cgf/CGF2004-Protocol.txt
I am not happy that they did not choose GTP, it would have been a good choice for all the requirements listed in the their specification.
I agree that defining yet another protocol is cumbersome, but one thing that the Gifu Challenge wants to do is to use a server (WING, a NNGS derivative I believe) to connect the two competing programs, which is a good thing IMHO. To do this with GTP would still require some kind of GTP - WING interface, isn't it?
Of course, some programs also already routinely play on servers (GNU Go, Many Faces, ...), but I think that in addition to the ability to play you would need something to setup the game (or maybe the game proposal can already be sent by the server instead of one of the programs?)
Marco Scheurer Sen:te, Lausanne, Switzerland http://www.sente.ch